uld have produced a scene of sanguinary contest.
Still, as the Moors might be suddenly aroused to defence, if, within the
allotted term of seventy days, succors should arrive from abroad, and as
they were at all times a rash, inflammable people, the wary Ferdinand
maintained a vigilant watch upon the city, and permitted no supplies of
any kind to enter. His garrisons in the seaports, and his cruisers in the
Straits of Gibraltar, were ordered likewise to guard against any relief
from the Grand Sultan of Egypt or the princes of Barbary. There was no
need of such precautions. Those powers were either too much engrossed by
their own wars or too much daunted by the success of the Spanish arms, to
interfere in a desperate cause; and the unfortunate Moors of Granada were
abandoned to their fate.

The month of December had nearly passed away; the famine became extreme,
and there was no hope of any favorable event within the terms specified
in the capitulation. Boabdil saw that to hold out to the end of the
allotted time would but be to protract the miseries of his people. With
the consent of his council, he determined to surrender the city on
January 6th. On December 30th he sent his grand vizier Yusef Aben Comixa,
with the four hundred hostages, to King Ferdinand, to make known his
intention; bearing him, at the same time, a present of a magnificent
cimeter, and two Arabian steeds superbly caparisoned.

The unfortunate Boabdil was doomed to meet with trouble to the end of his
career. The very next day, the santon or dervis Hamet Aben Zarrax, who
had uttered prophecies and excited commotions on former occasions,
suddenly made his appearance. Whence he came no one knew; it was rumored
that he had been in the mountains of the Alpujarras and on the coast of
Barbary, endeavoring to rouse the Moslems to the relief of Granada. He
was reduced to a skeleton; his eyes glowed like coals in their sockets,
and his speech was little better than frantic raving. He harangued the
populace in the streets and squares, inveighed against the capitulation,
denounced the King and nobles as Moslems only in name, and called upon
the people to sally forth against the unbelievers, for that Allah had
decreed them a signal victory.

Upward of twenty thousand of the populace seized their arms and paraded
the streets with shouts and outcries. The shops and houses were shut up;
the King himself did not dare to venture forth, but remained a kind of
prisoner